Republican Party of Florida

The Republican Party of Florida is the Florida state affiliate of the national Republican Party. The state party was organized in 1867 during Reconstruction, and a large number of Florida's senators and governors during the era were Republicans. However, the Florida Democratic Party dominated politics from the 1870s until the 1960s. In 1967, Republican Party candidate Richard Nixon took advantage of white southern conservatives' opposition to the Civil Rights movement to lure them into supporting the conservative Republicans, and the Republicans became the dominant party in the state in the following decades. By 1996, the Republicans gained control of the house and senate, the first legislature in any of the former Confederate States to be completely Republican-controlled. The party supported economic liberalism, limited regulation, capital punishment, gun rights, school choice, and faith-based initiatives and opposed abortion, same-sex marriages, intelligent design education, and embryonic stem cell research.